Xiaomi’s latest flagship smartphone looks much like Apple’s rival handsets except for one crucial difference: the price – which is less than half that of the similarly metallic iPhone 5s from the US group.

The steel handset was unveiled in Beijing by chief executive Lei JunLei on Tuesday, with reports that the crowd murmured “iPhone” as it was unveiled. Hugo Barra, the Google executive who joined Xiaomi as global vice-president last year, was also at the event. Read more

To accompany its preliminary quarterly earnings guidance on Tuesday, Samsung Electronics for the first time issued an explanatory note, to address “investors’ concerns about uncertainties”. Here are some of the key issues facing shareholders after Samsung’s 24 per cent year-on-year earnings decline. Read more

Facebook has created a new “missed call” product for advertisers in India, marking the first time that the social network has designed a special ad format for a single country.

When a mobile phone user clicks on one of the ads, it calls the advertiser and immediately hangs up. The advertiser returns the call with pre-recorded entertainment content and a marketing message – enabling the consumer to avoid paying data charges.

Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, admitted on Sunday that he had never once used Taobao, the ebay-like flagship website for the ecommerce company he will be taking public later this year, writes Charles Clover and Ma Fangjing.

The odd sounding admission came in the middle of a rambling commencement speech to graduates of Tsinghua University on Sunday, in which he highlighted his humble origins and lack of professional experience. He needs to keep his emotional distance from his products, he said, so that he can make decisions about them objectively. And that apparently means not knowing how they work. Read more

China’s premier job-hunting site got an impressive raise in its first day as a public company in the US, as its stock closed up 8.5 per cent on their debut day of trading.

Zhaopin, whose name means “recruit,” is a LinkedIn-like site for professional networking and job seeking. Its shares closed at $14.65. It had priced its offering of 5.6m American depositary shares at $13.50 each – the middle of an indicated range of $12.50 to $14.50. That means it raised a total of about $76m, excluding an over allotment option. Read more

Samsung Electronics has replaced its head of mobile design just weeks after the launch of its latest flagship Galaxy S5 phone, which was praised in online reviews for its features but criticised for its design.

The South Korean company, however, called the move a routine reshuffle, and denied any link to the criticism. Chang Dong-hoon will retain a broader role overseeing design across the company, while Lee Min-hyouk – at 42, one of the youngest figures in Samsung’s senior ranks – has been promoted to head of the company’s mobile communications design team. Read more

Alibaba on Tuesday submitted the first filing for its upcoming initial public offering in New York. Unusually for a private company, prospective investors already knew some of its key financial details, since Yahoo, its major shareholder, reports them as part of its quarterly results.

A new war is brewing between China’s three internet giants, known collectively as BAT – short for Baidu, the dominant search engine, Alibaba, which controls 80 per cent of China’s ecommerce, and Tencent, the gaming and social media juggernaut with a market capitalisation of $132bn. For Wang Ran, a blogger and founder of China eCapital, an investment bank, the competition between Didi Dache [“Honk Honk Taxi”], a Tencent taxi-hailing app, and Alibaba’s Kuadi Dache [“Fast taxi”] is “the first battle in the first world war of the internet”.

While it has a strong presence in India and Hong Kong, WhatsApp is a marginal player in many parts of Asia writes Simon Mundy. Kakao, Japan-based LINE and China-headquartered WeChat dominate mobile messaging in their respective home territories, and are fighting for control of the market in southeast Asia. The Japanese internet company Rakuten, meanwhile, last month spent $900m on Viber, an Israeli company that provides similar free calling and messaging services. Read more

China’s mountainous Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has little of the wealth and fast development of the places in China foreigners have already heard of, but on one key measure of economic development, Guangxi is winning — the growth rate of spending online.

Online shopping throughout China is expanding fast – far faster than the US and Europe – but it’s growing particularly fast in China’s poorer regions like Guangxi, where malls are sparser and the number of people getting online for the first time is greater. Read more

As Japan strives to remain at the technological forefront, why is it that its companies are so averse to the idea of merging? Too many make the same thing yet do not get around to pooling their resources. The FT’s Special Report on Japan’s technology and innovation investigates this phenomenon, while looking at some of the latest in Japanese design, writes Peter Chapman. Read more

For the first time in eight years, almost the entire top management team at Samsung Electronics will present themselves on Wednesday before an audience of about 350 analysts and investors at Seoul’s Shilla Hotel.

The full-day event will feature addresses from eight executives, who will also take questions. Chairman Lee Kun-hee and his son, vice-chairman Jae-yong, will not be on stage – but this represents a rare opportunity for the audience to press senior figures about Samsung’s long-term strategy, writes Simon Mundy.

So what are the key questions surrounding the future of the world’s biggest technology company by sales? Read more

By many measures, very badly. October sales are down 13 per cent year on year. Revenue next quarter could be as low as NT$40bn, a third less than the same quarter last year and lower than analysts’ expectations. And after reporting its first ever quarterly operating loss as a company in the third quarter, it shows no sign of returning to profit in the fourth.

But one measure in particular, released today with its full third quarter results, shows the Taiwanese company’s travails — its accounts payable. That measures how long it is taking the company to pay its bills to its suppliers, who make the parts of its phones. Read more

China’s biggest ecommerce company, Alibaba, has joined the growing enthusiasm for cloud storage applications, buying Kanbox for an undisclosed amount.

Kanbox offers free storage for documents, photos and other files, bringing Alibaba into competition with other Chinese heavyweights Tencent and Baidu, which offer similar services. The company raised $20m in Series B funding two years ago, so the acquisition value is likely to have been several hundred million dollars. Read more

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About the authors

Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.

Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years. He reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby from 2004 to 2013, before returning to London.

Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.

Robert Cookson is the FT's digital media correspondent in London. He
covers digital enterprise in media, from the music industry to local newspapers and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. A former Hong Kong markets correspondent, he is interested in the interplay
between old media and new technologies.

Hannah Kuchler writes about technology and Silicon Valley from the FT's San Francisco bureau. She covers social media including Facebook and Twitter and the dark and mysterious world of cybersecurity. Hannah has worked for the FT in London, Hong Kong and New York, reporting on everything from British politics to the Chinese internet.

Sarah Mishkin in a correspondent in San Francisco, where she covers payments, e-commerce, and political news on the West Coast. Prior to California, she has worked as an FT reporter in New York, London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and most recently in Taiwan, where she covered Chinese internet companies, semiconductors, and tech supply chains.